Another Step Forward
by 32bitXP
Summary: One single Shingo Shoji, from beginning to present tense. He was born, and became older. But throughout all of it, questions were never asked, not by the Night Kids and not by anyone else.
1. Broken Mirror

Another Step Forward

1: Broken Mirror

I don't own Initial D. I'm not Japanese.

* * *

It was a mistake. Kanako Shoji stared blankly into space, space being the off-white tiles of the bathroom and the dulled faucet of the sink. Her hands hit her lap, the small plastic object hitting the floor with a blunt noise that gave the impression of a dent. _It couldn't be…_ But it was. She had been feeling nauseous and sick, and no home remedy or combination of over-the-counter pills from the drugstore could solve anything. So, on a whim, she had decided on a pregnancy test, even just as a joke. However, her worst fears had become true, and it didn't matter if the technology was highly flawed and ridiculed by some, she now felt it was true. "This will…" Indeed, it would ruin everything. Kanako had always been infertile. She had never been able to have children...and now? She took a deep breath, and reassured herself that her husband wouldn't be back for a few days, on yet another business trip. "I'll just have to, and it'll be simple." Anything for love, the quote supposedly went. But now, with a new job, the relationship had become even more strained and tense, distant. So, Kanako walked down the flight of stairs, slowly, fighting a panic attack brought on by fickle reality once more. A car's engine was thrown into life again, and soon enough tires spun down gravel driveway, gaining traction and flying down eerily smooth pavement.

"I'll just have to," Kanako said quietly to herself. An abortion was really the only option, wasn't it? But there was a nagging feeling of wrong in her head, something completely wrong with what she would eventually do. As she drove down the freeway, ignoring the world and the radio playing softly, a thought came to mind, the thought in of itself being "What if the child is alive?" Kanako said it to herself, repeated the thought, and suddenly struggled to keep the car in a straight line. But, she'd have to, wouldn't she? _Wouldn't she?_ Kanako came to a compromise of not thinking about it at all, and simply paying attention to the roads and looking for the correct exit.

A car drove into a parking lot, one of many. A female climbed out, and was soon inside the building, door closing behind her.

And it turned out that Kanako had indeed been laid out on the table, lack of man beside her not questioned, and it was indeed a child. Kanako refrained from asking the essential question, hoping that everything would just resolve itself on its own, not needing her input. Until, of course, the nurse walked in, clipboard by her side, blue scrubs pristine and without stain. _What kind of a nurse is that?_ The thought flew through her head for a moment. The nurse, meanwhile, had been dragging a pen down lines of kanji before checking some off, several short slashes. The nurse looked to Kanako, and smiled.

"Miss...Shoji?"

Kanako smiled back, watery. She didn't want anything, didn't want to know anything…

"Although you made it pretty clear you wanted to have an abortion, not being ready for a child and such, the baby has a heartbeat. Still your decision though."

Kanako let out her breath in a rush of air, and felt dizzy as she struggled to stand.

"It's...fine," She muttered." Just that I was supposed to be infertile, according to some prestigious doctors."

The nurse smiled wider, oblivious. "There's always a chance for doctors to be wrong. And anyways, aren't you married?" The nurse glanced down to her forms for verification. "Won't your husband be so happy?"

Kanako felt her head almost spin, her senses feeling broken somehow. "Yeah," she whispered, more to herself than anything else, feeling hopeless.

"So," Kanako reassured herself, "He won't be that mad, right?" Her husband, Tsutomu, had always wanted a child, until he had found out she really couldn't have children. He said something along the lines of "It's fine, love still goes on," and their relationship had deteriorated from there. A new job, less time with her. It had gone great for him, but she just felt more and more depressed. At least she didn't want to kill herself. "No," She muttered at the same time that the thought crossed her mind. "Child." Kanako resigned herself to sit at the front door, waiting for the apocalypse. Later she would come to find herself dozing in the chair next to the front entrance, and Tsutomu quietly returning, looking regretfully upon the sleeping figure.

* * *

It was now late morning, Kanako realizing she had slept through a night and part of the day. She swallowed, her mind now completely awake once again. She stood from the chair, ready to find her husband. It was easy enough, finding him sitting across from her, drinking the morning tea that she should have made. "So you waited for me." He stated.

Kanako's mind suddenly went into a flurry, a panic turning into a figurative blizzard. "I...uh…"

Tsutomu smiled, accepting. "There's something you wanted to tell me, right." Kanako nodded. "Well, what is it?"

She stuttered, almost tripped, but she stood. "Tsu...I-ah...I'm pregnant." Tsutomu stared at her for a moment. Distaste flooded across his face, immediately.

"So you lied to me?"

Kanako was then struggling for breath, she felt.

"No!" She almost yelled.

Tsutomu stared at her, judgmentally. "Explain."

"I...there's a very low chance I could be with child."

Tsutomu's expression darkened. "But you are."

"I-" She sniffled. "I don't know."

Tsutomu came to his own conclusions. "So you were sleeping around on me?"

Kanako's eyes widened. "No! Didn't we...that one time…"

Tsutomu smiled saccharine sweet, his eyes cold. "I was wearing protection, _honey._ "

Kanako almost squeaked."No. It could've broken, you know."

Tsutomu's saccharine grin turned into a feral snarl. "Sure it did." He stood, his long strides filled with all the purpose in the world, and slapped his wife in the face.

She fell back roughly into the chair. "I-it's!" Kanako struggled for words, and her face stung.

"I don't care-" He leaned down, and slapped her again, holding her arms back. "Whose child it is." He stood back, and stared at her, all affection gone. "Leave. Never come back. I don't want you anymore."

Kanako stood, spine full of a new feeling of reviled anger. "I never wanted you anyway!" She yelled, a new courage taking her over. They were indeed about the same height, but Kanako had always been the meeker of the pair, being the generic housemaking wife. Meeker, of course, until now.

A vase went flying across the room, shattering more than a few centimeters away, but still close to Tsutomu's head. Kanako turned on her heel, and walked out. She slammed the door behind her, sure to slam it hard enough to rattle the glass. For emphasis, she punched it. The old wooden door made a sad noise. Kanako had walked out on him because he had walked out on her first, those many months ago. "The car's mine, _fucker!_ " Kanako did indeed own the lease on the car, an older Honda. Still with the feeling of anger clouding her mind, she started the car and drove off, tire marks ruining a pristine lawn and running over various bushes that she had planted herself. "No more…" she whispered.

In the air, she could hear her former husband yelling "Call the bastard child Usotsuki!" but she ignored it, and smiled.

All she had was the car, the gas tank, and the yen in her wallet and in various spaces throughout the car, as well as her bank account which was on an alright status. She owned next to nothing now, but felt freer than she ever had. The wind blew through the open windows, and Kanako felt at peace, suddenly. "Shingo," she whispered, drowning out everything else in her mind. " _He'll_ be Shingo."


	2. Questionably Shatterproof

Another Step Forward

2: Questionably Shatterproof

I don't own Initial D, but I still really want a Miata.

* * *

Kanako would have to go back to Tokyo, where her family remained staunchly while she moved to the countryside with her new husband. Now, it was all over. A simple divorce, and she'd be single again, forgetting the few years she had in the sakura blossoms. Perhaps her sister would tell her 'I told you so,' and her mother would smile, saying something about disrespect and dishonor to the man that left their beautiful and oh-so-perfect daughter. But, she'd move in with them again, acquire a job, and raise her son without a father in the smoke-stained urban jungle of Tokyo. It'd be easy enough. Her family, indeed, would be sympathetic, because they had never liked her husband anyways, her mother going off to the other room and muttering under her breath when they had first met. Perhaps, she thought, a bit of wine and some decent food would make her feel better in another way, if not the one she wanted. But, Kanako did have to accept that she was indeed pregnant, even if it didn't show yet.

The car rumbled, as its engine made a noise alluding its loyalty to Kanako, saying it would have blown its engine if Tsutomu had attempted to drive it again. She smiled, knowing there was absolutely no way cars could talk, but she liked the feeling of her car on the pavement, and the way its antiquated engine had still powered the automobile for years past its expiration date. Truthfully, once the engine went, she might as well sell the car, since it would drive completely different from what it had been a bit ago. "Honestly, I'm just distracting myself…" It was simple, really. If she talked to her car her thoughts wouldn't go wild with regret, and then worry. Kanako's face then split into a grin, remembering how her husband had always hated her nice little old Honda anyways.

Her family didn't exactly live in Tokyo, but the outskirts of it, really. There was money there, and there were trees, but the air still smelled of smoke and diesel, and the nearest school was in the city. So, it was simple. Kanako knew where her family lived, and nobody would question yet another car using the back roads to skip the traffic. Slowly, the countryside diorama next to the freeway morphed into houses and groomed gardens, with gravel driveways and unnaturally green shades of grass. Kanako took a deep breath, and tried to ignore her now-shaking hands, sending the car into minute paroxysms as the steering wheel shook ever-so-gently. The adrenaline, the anger had worn off. Kanako could indeed drive with one hand, or none at all in some harried moments, but now she clutched the wheel with white-knuckled hands, having the visualization of shifting gears and spinning tires burning onto the pavement in her mind. In truth, her driving was less than confident on multiple-laned roads with cars flying by at 110 kilometers per hour, but on the small side roads, she floored the gas pedal and relished in the rushing wind.

But now…? It was true, that maybe she had lost all confidence in herself, for now.

* * *

The car, indeed, was a first-generation Civic, purchased with Kanako's own money. It was used, and although Tsutomu argued against it, she purchased the small, humming car for a lower price than it would have been. It was a bright red, and Kanako felt the car gave her freedom, even before she had left and things had fragmented, because she could drive whenever she wanted, wherever she decided to go. A line of cherry blossoms was coating the road in petals, the two-laned road a sudden escape from the freeway. She turned, and the petals blew everywhere, scattering on the eddied air currents. August led to the end of it, though, the petals more off the trees than on them. Kanako scanned the houses, each not the same, although the trees were. She was looking, though, for a sky-stretching chestnut tree, the roots now breaking ground after decades of growth and arguments with the neighbors about said tree. The car pulled into the driveway, gravel ground down into two distinct valleys by various vehicles. It slid to a stop, and the engine slept once more, the clicking noise a faint farewell to both Kanako and the day. She swallowed, feeling suddenly anxious, but then stood, climbed out of the car, and stood on the gravelly ground with the grass, the chestnut offering dappled shade from the late summer sun, which hung low in the sky, but not low enough to paint the sky flares of coral and rose.

Kanako threw her hesitance, humiliation, and regret into the watery gutter that lined Japan's mountain passes, and knocked on the door.

A few shuffling noises, clicking of a light or two, and the door clicked, the lock now unlocked. It slide open to reveal her sister, Makiko. She stared, and the other stared back. They were no carbon copy, each inheriting the opposite parent's looks. Makiko's face split into a smile, and the two embraced.

"Here for a visit?" Makiko said brightly. "I hope you didn't bring that...husband...of yours."

Kanako paired a strained smile with an elongated shoulder shrug. "No...infact, he'll never be back here, so tell Hisae she can stop drinking."

Makiko laughed, before frowning. "What do you mean...by that?" She looked back, and saw only Kanako and her sleeping Civic. "You didn't…"

Kanako looked at Makiko. "I'll explain," she added as an afterthought.

But truly, her thoughts suddenly erupted into wildfire.

 _Tsutomu's saccharine grin turned into a feral snarl. "Sure it did." He stood, his long strides filled with all the purpose in the world, and slapped his wife in the face._

 _She fell back roughly into the chair. "I-it's!" Kanako struggled for words, and her face stung._

 _"I don't care-" He leaned down, and slapped her again, holding her arms back. "Whose child it is." He stood back, and stared at her, all affection gone. "Leave. Never come back. I don't want you anymore."_

She was frozen, the suddenly memory ringing in her ears. The wind was silent, and she could only hear the shattering of porcelain. With another gust, a handful of stained leaves, all the colors of a warm hearth, blew in the wind. The chestnut's emerald leaves were now speckled with crimson, oddly enough.

"Come on, Kanako!" Her sister yelled, before laughing. "You just going to become a statue, now?"

Kanako shook it off, before nodding. "Yeah," she said, quietly, and walked inside. Kanako hadn't visited in a while, and the changes were noticeable, stained wood seeming antique when it was normal a few years before.

Hisae, her mother, appeared from another doorway and smiled, setting down a glass of a probably alcoholic beverage. "Kanako! So you didn't bring your annoying man, anymore?"

Kanako smiled at her mother. "No, infact, you'll never need to see him again."

Hisae stared suspiciously at Kanako. "So...you divorced the annoying brat?" She slipped over to the clear glass, and drank the rest of it. "Good on you!"

Makiko gasped with the realization. "What happened?" Kanako stared at the wall for a moment, and then the floor and the ceiling, before sighing.

"You know that I was supposed to be unable to have children?" Kanako put the question out there, waiting for a response. The two other women turned their heads, one in shock and one in amusement. "Well…" A rose blush spread across her face. "Now, I'm pregnant."

The simple statement caused quite the uproarious turning-of-the-tables.

"Wait...you?" Makiko was shocked.

Hisae grinned, and before wandering back into the kitchen, muttered "Grandbabies, eh?"

Kanako shyly shrugged. "He thinks I was with another man, and that I had gotten pregnant due to whomever they were. But, it's my husband, and he thinks I…"

Makiko's stare turned aggressive. "Why? Didn't he…"

The two sisters both thought of something at the same time. "He could have been doing it to you," Makiko said, at the same time Kanako would have said something. "It makes too much sense." she added. The two also accepted it as fact, not knowing at all that it was indeed exactly the case.

Hisae had returned, with another full glass, and asked the question.

"Is it a boy, or a girl? I can sort of see it now, have you gotten anything yet?"

It caused Kanako to become a shade more unto a peony, before she answered.

"The results at the hospital...said...it would probably...be a boy."

The two women, one older and one younger, burst into cheers instead of thinking of the numerous risks.

Makiko stuttered, before getting the question out, even if it was a bit fragmented. "Names? I mean, you know, what name?"

Kanako smiled, and looked directly in the face of Makiko, her mother noticing something between her two daughters.

"I think...Shingo...would be a good name."

The room was quiet, until Hisae walked over and gave her youngest daughter a constricting hug. Makiko looked at ease, a smile painted on her face, all the details correct at last. "Yes, it would," Hisae said with sudden conviction. "Yes, it would."

* * *

Life had changed, in a sudden way. Kanako had a part time job, her stomach growing, the weight ever-secure even as it dragged down her shoulders. She walked slower, moved intelligently and not impulsively, but her eyes sparkled in a light only a mother would understand. Kanako did have it in her head that she would indeed be a mother, ignoring the other current of rampant thoughts of miscarriage and other things that could go wrong.

Her breaths were more certain, a hand often resting against the weight. Whispered rhymes and tales, so that the child could hear the world before he saw it with his own eyes.

And, one moment led to another. Kanako was reclined on the porch, content with watching the chestnut lose its leaves a day at a time, reassuring herself of the child within. "Mine." She whispered. It wasn't that cold, but her mother insisted on a blanket, even in the surprisingly balmy days of late October.

The wind blew, tossing leaves every which way and bending the grass blades like origami cranes. A glaring sun was fine with letting soft sunlight through the still-numerous canopy of the chestnut, dying the leaves goldenrod and amber.

Kanako took in another breath, and almost crumpled inwards with the sudden pain.

Her eyes flared, pupils dilated. "Makiko!" She yelled.

Makiko appeared from the warm insides of the home. "Yeah?" She then noticed Kanako's hunched stature, muscles tense and hands twitching.

"Hospital," she let out with the outward breath and another gust of wind rattling the terracotta leaves.

Makiko ran, almost, crushing the grass into footprint-shaped tracks. Soon enough, the red Civic had awoken, engine purring, forgetting the sudden abandonment. Kanako had followed, slower, steps sure-footed but shivering. Makiko helped her into the back, and the Civic flew down the driveway, going airborne for a moment as it drove over the crumbling curb.

"You know how to drive manual?" Kanako said tightly. Makiko nodded, the Civic going faster and faster, the clunk of switching gears shaking the car, which Kanako had never noticed before. Kanako whimpered, and closed her eyes.

" _Please_ …"


	3. Reality, The Sting Of Glass Shards

Another Step Forward

3: Reality, The Sting of Glass Shards

I don't own Initial D. Or the Eurobeats.

* * *

A red, first generation Honda Civic had all the reason in the world to defy the speed limits. No matter freeway or back road, the Civic had decided now was the time to fly down roads like it never had before. The tachometer was balancing at a steady six on the highest gear, no time to slow down, anymore. Perhaps they were all making a big deal out of it, just a normal occurrence, but perhaps the Civic knew better, and knew the future better than some people knew themselves.

* * *

Makiko ignored the signs, the speed limit, and the cars beside her, choosing to focus only upon the wheel's spin and car's groans. Her eyes unconsciously narrowed, her brain perhaps preparing for a race Makiko would have never thought of otherwise. She could hear Kanako's harried breaths from the back of the car, various attempts to remain calm and to _not_ bolster the rising tide of panic, but Kanako was slowly losing control as she whimpered, curling into the car seat. But being closer to the city, it would take less time. Cities defined as urban, clusters of people, hospital located on the outskirts of stained cement and smoky air. And in inevitability, a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, and hands tightly grasping the other, for a feel of virtual safety in an ever-crumbling world.

* * *

And then, a car pulled into a parking lot, screeched to a stop, tires leaving black marks on asphalt. The driver door flew open, shaking the car a bit, and the passenger in the back did as well. The one helped the other out, and a walk, more of shoulder-leaning poise and unbalanced trembling, made it inside to the lobby.

Kanako's mind was not full of worries, even though it was. However, her worries were not voiced in a tumultuous litany of screeching madness, but varying echoes of 'Please,' in her head. Some a keening wail, and some a raspy whisper. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and focused on the rattle of the air conditioning and the pain in her stomach. She noticed that Makiko was nodding blankly as the nurse at the front rattled off a thousand things and clicked about with her pen and moved various papers about the desktop. The nurse, who was similar to the other one Kanako had seen before but _wasn't_ exactly, nodded before taking Kanako by the hand and leading her down a hallway, the waxed tiles too shiny and the walls with a selection of abstract photographs.

Makiko swallowed nervously, throwing a backward glance at the glass doors, which she could see an odd diorama of life outside. In a moment, she shoved her hands to her sides, and quickly followed her sister who was finding a unshaken walk difficult.

There were unspoken questions between the nurse and the expecting mother. Kanako had a firm grasp on the nurse's hand, and Makiko wasn't far behind, lagging back because she honestly didn't know whether to leave or go. A door opened out of the wall, exposing a minute section of the labyrinthine rooms of the hospital, before Kanako was led inside. The nurse waited, staring back at Makiko who stared at the nurse.

"My name's Aika," she said quickly, rubbing her hands on her clothing out of nervousness.

"Well, are you coming?"

Makiko had only slipped in before the door slammed shut.

Aika spun around to look at Makiko for a moment.

"Your sister's pregnant, and we believe she is close,"

Makiko unconsciously nodded, before frowning. This lady had done her peeking-through-the-paperwork, had she?

"Take a seat," she said mildly, the tone of voice disguising a command. Makiko sat. Kanako had relaxed into the bed in the middle of the room, curled on her side and whimpering.

"It's alright...relax," Aika said, before briskly walking out on the search to find a doctor.

Makiko moved, and she stood next to her sister, and grasped her hand.

"It's okay," She said. "Don't worry, Kanako."

* * *

However, Makiko had no clue what would or could happen, and she just maintained a sharp optimism, ignoring anything that could go bad. The thoughts still danced, though, and Makiko stole another glance at her sister's face, eyes dilated and staring at the ceiling, hands fisting the thin sheets of the hospital bed in discomfort. Through all this, the sun had set, and they both noticed the hospital take on a different, starker pallor.

* * *

The moon rose high in the sky, and stars did indeed glimmer on the satiny blue fabric. Clouds were silvery cirrus tails, the sign of a new weather front moving in. The trees rustled quietly. The hospital, a large almost-brick, was ominous in the night, light falling upon ground through the windows. In each room, you could say a completely different catastrophe was taking place. The rushing wind was trading the leaves with the air currents, the early November night clear and brisk, the lingering heat of the summer now summoning a flash-frozen frost.

In one room, a scream. Faint yellow lamp. Rattling air conditioning.

"Push!"

Someone would yell, and a struggling breath, exhalation of air. Blood. Not too much, not too little, but it's not like anyone could know that. Intravenous. Flashes of white, clenched eyes and dilated pupils. Take no breaths, and take a thousand at the same time. White sheets and gray floor, off-white walls and a water-stained ceiling. A grasp of hands, a loving, white-knuckled embrace. A million thoughts of varied-volume prayers and pleases, and as much of "Don't let go." No words spoken. Scattered and shattered, a heartbeat a hummingbird's lazy flight through the flower fields. No questions, no answers. Voice cracks, breaks off, and all there is now is the simple task of breathing. The silent midnight, cars rushing down freeway and storm raging somewhere.

Waves crash against ocean on an opposite coast. A plane lands, the roiling fog ocean and illuminated sunrise bridge behind it. A delinquent wind traces its way through a rice paddy, shaking blades of grass as it dervishes its way through the low-lying land.

"You're okay. You're okay. You're okay."

And somewhere, another cry broke loose of the restraining silence.


	4. Beginnings, Endings, Rings

Another Step Forward

4: Beginnings, Endings, Rings

I don't own the thingymajig that is Initial D, but I do own a floppy disk.

* * *

 _She wasn't dead, was she?_

Kanako shook off anesthesia, and stared up with blurry eyes. Makiko looked from the side, standing from her seated position, rolling her arms to shake off the stiffness.

"You're not dead," Makiko muttered.

Kanako just then noticed the IV that hadn't been there, and a machine or two making beeping noises to mark the passing seconds.

"You could have been," she added.

"...hm?" Kanako rolled over on her side, hissing in sudden pain. The nurse sprung to attention, suddenly throwing out a thousand medical terms that Kanako had no understanding of. She moved her hand in a 'continue, please' gesture, and added "In Japanese, please?"

"You're okay, and your son is okay, and it's all okay. You want to see him?"

 _Son._

* * *

Makiko had a smile that was overshadowed by exhaustion, but she looked towards her sister, hair flung back and face streaked with sweat and tears, crinkled eyes and a tense stature, but looking healthy nonetheless. Kanako offered a faint grin towards the nurse, who she noticed was the same. Aika, the now disheveled nurse who now looked quite disgusted with her appearance. But she smiled as well, and walked into another room.

Makiko yawned, before leaning down to look at Kanako in detail. Kanako looked mildly confused, before asking "And what are you doing?"

"Did it hurt, Kanako?"

Kanako looked extremely puzzled, before softly making a noise - an almost-laugh. "Obviously...but now I'm just tired, and hungry, and thirsty, and a bunch of other things."

"How could you be hungry?"

"I like food."

And so the two sisters bantered on, one laugh tired and another just frail. Kanako slowly felt a bit better, the dull pain turning into something targeted at a specific location, which in her opinion would suffice for it all. Her voice strengthened, but she still felt shaky, and so Kanako waited a bit, while Makiko rambled on about some such funny story about a cat that jumped out of a window and landed on someone's head.

* * *

Then, the door opened again, to some mysterious back room, but instead Aika ended up slowly walking out of it with a something swaddled gently in her eyes.

Carefully, deliberately, gingerly, and then the something was set on Kanako's lap. Kanako had pushed herself up to a sitting position, leaning against a few pillows, no matter what anyone else with a medical degree said. The something was quiet, until the something looked at her.

The something was a child.

"Shingo..." she whispered. He had been cleaned up, not that she'd recollect anything right now of how he had looked before. "He's beautiful..."

There was no mention of anything other than that, because he was calm. His eyes were still gray, having not decided what color to become yet, even if there was a pretty good prediction about it. Even with all the so-called baby fat, Kanako could see the outline of an almond-shaped face, just like hers. He...the baby...Shingo...son...wasn't smiling or crying, but held a cool calm, which was surprising after all of that 'chaotic chaos', her mother would say. And then his eyes looked up to her, even if it was only shadow against light, and then he smiled.

Kanako took in a hasty breath, Makiko smiled and clasped her hands against her chest, and the nurse looked on at the scene feeling bittersweet about it. She had pills in the one hand, a sheet in the other, and a ring on her finger which she tried to ignore. Instead, Aika stared at the ring, catching the incandescent light from the flickery ceiling lamps, the simple band reminding her of what she had lost. "I did this for you..." she whispered to herself. "So I could save others when they couldn't save you." Aika stared at it, a plain ring, and shook off the feelings and the maybe-tear. Of course, if you asked her, she wasn't crying. Aika turned back to see the new mother gently holding one of the baby's tiny hands, and held back a sniffle. It was a miracle giving life, but it hurt every time.

"...for as life giveth, life taketh away..."

It was something her husband had said, a long time ago. From a book? But all Aika remembered now was the moment.

* * *

 _He had smiled at her, and then the roof caved in. By the time anyone had come to help, all they would have found was a corpse covered in large concrete shards and shingles and a newly-inaugurated widow clawing at the pile of rubble, eyes red and fingers bloody, her voice a keening howl._

* * *

Aika took a breath, and got back to her job. The mother was fawning over her child, the sister grinning. Neither showed any sign of anything communicable, and that was good. However, the mother would need to be watched, as the whole deliverance-of-the-baby- had been quite a risky ordeal. The baby was fine, though, no signs of a birth defect.

The mother... Aika shrugged, and was now deadly intent on crashing the party with a thousand stacks of paperwork, or just a single paper to be signed.

Pen, clipboard, scritchity-scratch, scribbly kanji, decent and good enough. It said the name, which was all that was needed, because now he was officially Shingo, and not just a nameless nickname.

Kanako looked happy, and Makiko looked if she were about to burst into tears with the joy she felt for her sister. Shingo, being a newborn baby, was indifferent.

The nurse sighed. Her memories were her own, and nobody else's. No need to spoil the joy. She wandered, left the pills and the paper on the table, and went into the other room to organize a few things. But really? To cry, and fall back against the cold unpainted wall, and let the tears fall and wet your shirt, slicken your face with salty sorrow.

* * *

Kanako looked at Makiko again, with the baby distracted. "When am I going home?" Makiko reassured her, a bit volatilely. "A few days, and then we'll have to set all this up, and Hisae'll be so happy and stop drinking goddamned sake altogether..."

They both laughed, knowing that would never happen. Maybe, though, she would be happier. And soon, they'd return home, with the new addition to their family, the man of the house in all irony. Excluding the cats.

Would Shingo like the cats? Would he like the car? And the trees? Would he like it all, and wander around the abandoned lots and empty fields? Kanako's mind was already somehow shaky with excitement, ignoring all the complications with not just birthing a child, but raising one, and having a job, and a thousand more things.

But right now, it didn't matter. However, it would soon.


	5. Naps and Mortality

Another Step Forward

5: Naps and Mortality

I don't own the whole Initial D thing. I've never eaten real sushi, only California Rolls.

* * *

It had been a month. Only a month, and yet the month seemed like a year full of 24-hour days. Kanako took a breath, only willing to part with her child for a moment after he had fallen comfortably asleep, the soft sound of breathing reassuring her. Hisae had stared at her, and stated "Get some rest, and let the grandmother do the work," before almost shoving her out of the room. Even if Kanako suspected Hisae was accompanied by a drink and another of her gratuitous and smutty "novels", she trusted her mother, who in all honesty was not even twenty years apart from her daughter.

Makiko, whom she had not thought of her younger sister in a long time, was sitting outside the room fiddling with something. Kanako looked downwards, to see some sort of personal camera being messed with, film and negatives and whatever went into the usage of a camera.

"What are you doing, Makiko?" she asked.

"What does it look like, Kanako?"

"Just because I'm five years older than you doesn't mean you get to hold obscure camera parts over me, thank you very much."

Makiko snorted in amusement, and Kanako wandered off to the kitchen to find something to eat, with predictable containers of dry rice in the cabinets and a teapot on the stove. Not mentioning that stove was infamous for starting fires and leaking gas even when you turned it off. It wasn't like anyone would replace the stove, due to her mother's odd obsession over it, claiming that stoves weren't made like they used to be. However, stoves were actually made different now, due to the fact that manufacturers now had higher quality standards for their products. It'd be a bad sign if a house blew up under a name brand, wouldn't it?

Settled down with a bowl of the ever-familiar rice, she overheard her mother doing something that sounded like a stroke. However, as she set down her bowl and chopsticks and wandered to the door, she saw her mother playing with the baby. The stroke noises were just nonsense noises, and all was good in the life of Kanako Shoji for a small amount of time.

* * *

Around five minutes later, Makiko wandered into the kitchen, and grinned, showing Kanako the camera which looked exactly the same as it had looked.

"What're you going to do? Take a picture?"

Makiko fiddled with the plastic box again.

"Wait, just wait a second, and-"

Kanako looked morbidly amused.

"Keep your eyes open! Smile or something!"

The _or something_ stuck in Kanako's mind as a pertinent loophole, but she smiled anyway. The camera made a clicking noise, and a light flashed. From where? The camera, of course. Kanako blinked, stunned, before Makiko burst into restrained giggles that were in no way restrained at all.

"You did this on purpose!" Kanako accused mildly.

"Nah, just wait." The camera made another noise, and soon a paper printed out of it.

Makiko waited, before turning it over. And there it was, Kanako on a paper, a photograph with all the beige goodness of the limited camera.

"Isn't it nice?"

"Actually, yes, it is." Even with the beige undertones, it was a testament to technology and how far things had come. Kanako closed her eyes, took a breath.

"Yeah…"

* * *

Buttery summers under sky-stretching trees, and then the crack of thunder as the rain pelts the ground. Tripping and falling and getting up again, school friends that ended up moving to the metro.

* * *

And then she was back, in the same house with the creaky floorboards and roof in need of replacing, but it was home nonetheless. Kanako opened her eyes.

"It's beautiful."

Makiko looked overjoyed. "You really think so? That's great! Maybe I can take some of you, Mom, and Shingo!"

 _Family. What was it, really? A disillusioned hope? Or a fantasy only the luckiest can obtain?_

Kanako eventually made it into the room where Shingo had set up his little outpost - well, she had done it for him, but hey - and found Hisae, asleep, unconsciously rocking in the chair with little Shingo asleep as well. She silently waved Makiko, who ended up taking another picture of the three of them which awoke Hanae, who grumbled something about disrespectful children before falling back asleep, arms curled around the small, and still sleeping, baby, to steady him.

* * *

"It's nice, isn't it, Kanako?" Makiko asked, a bit later, when the sun had fallen.

"What?" Kanako said, distracted from nodding off into a cup of tea.

A sigh, now among the star-speckled sky. "Just...all of it."

"All of it?" A vague definition, understood in full by context.

"Yeah, how do you like it?" A question.

"It's nice." An answer.

"Nice, meaning what?" Requesting, of course, detail.

"Just...completely different. I have a kid and no husband, three women that could all be equated as mothers. Living here in the outskirts of a city, the fake idea of countryside, even if there are trees and empty lots. Inhaling the sweet scent of undergrowth and overgrown grass as well as the sour undertone of diesel and chemicals, in a mirror-reflected almost shattered lie of a world."

Makiko almost smiled. "Guess you can wax poetic, too?" However, she knew it was true. The buildings encroached on their safe haven day after day and month after month, car lines from the not-so-distant road, the noise of engines and screeching of tires heard echoing from the fields above.

And behind it all, Mount Mitake carving the sky, sunsets, and sunrise into pieces. Sugar-crystal glaciers frosting the top, and fog gathering around the bottom on warm summer nights after a crackling and violent thunderstorm. Unreliable radio and piecemeal television, but only a half-hour drive unto cookie-cutter suburbia. Almost, you could think, a half-and-half mirage of wilderness.

 _One foot upon the carpet and the other still outside on the porch._

* * *

In the end, Kanako decided the conversation had become awkward enough, as dealing with futility was quite uncomfortable for most if not all. Her tea had grown cold with the night. Makiko had been distracted by rustling leaves, and the two turned to go back inside but were met with a strange face.

A cat, white and black with amber eyes, stared at them both from its perch on the side of the porch railing. It did not hiss, but it raised its tail which swatted around at them a few times before it scampered into the darkness. The two looked at each other, both recognizing a significant look and a significant memory. But instead of a verbal acceptance or something of the sort, both shrugged off the odd appearance of the so-called 'balance cat'.

* * *

Perhaps in the future things would come to pass that would reflect on the cat's sudden appearance. But now, Kanako tread softly on the kitchen floor, avoiding the wood she knew was creaky. Almost silently, she opened the door where her child's refuge was. Shingo was asleep in a crib, minute rocks and soft breaths. Hanae smiled under a lamp, book closed and on the table next to it. It seemed her eyes had been resting on the child. "He's fine," she said. Kanako leaned down, and gently stroked a finger against his small arm, curled tightly against his body. Unconsciously, the arm reached out and slowly, shakily, it laid a light touch against the mother's finger and grasped it.

Not a silent gasp, not a shaky one, but a gasp that was a smile as well, ever so bittersweet. Kanako thought of the previous conversation with her sister. She wanted to shrug it off, grasp onto this moment instead, but she felt she could not. Instead, the one thing Kanako did do was whisper "...Shingo…" ever so softly, ever so loudly.

An eye opened drowsily, stared for a moment with intense focus, and closed again, annoyed with all the sudden attention.

Kanako turned, and found her sister behind her again, staring wistfully with somewhat glistening eyes. "Makiko, are you okay?" Makiko looked at her sister, staring with an empty look that hurt. Not directed to her, but the fact she had no supposed love and was relegated to being an aunt-mother type of person. Makiko had none of her own family, just the ones she grew up with.

The two sisters embraced quietly as their mother slept, leaning sideways into the chair with a leg to the right and an arm to the left, breathing loudly as she squirmed around occasionally.

"It's alright."

Sniffle.

"Eventually, Makiko."


End file.
